Author: ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

https://www.instagram.com/wolvesofgray This blog is a refugee and a survivor of the Great Tumblr Inquisition of December 17th, 2018. I am gay artist, who received training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now, a retired high-end fine art framer living in Maryland, USA. My interests and studies in life run a wide gamut from art to history and from the scientific to the esoteric. I have been building this blog of images and texts for the last eight years. My wish is that my posts pique the interest of viewers and encourage them to experience more.

Maritus Zusak: “And We Climbed Out of Those Shower Facilities”

 

Photographer Unknown, (The Morning Shower)

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.”

― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Pat Conroy: The Lowcountry Had Its Own Special Ache and Sting”

Photographer Unknown, (The Lowcountry)

“I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting.”

― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret

Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, “Orpheus’s Sorrow”, 1876, Oil on Canvas, Dahesh Museum, New York City

Born in Paris in January of 1852, Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret was one of the leading French artists of the naturalist school. The son of a tailor, he was raised by his grandfather and later took his grandfather’s name, Bouveret, as his own. Beginning in 1869, Dagnan-Bouveret studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under historic and religious painter Alexandre Cabanel and Academic painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme. 

Dagnan-Bouveret began exhibiting in 1875 at the Paris Salon where he won the 1880 first-class medal for his painting “An Accident”, an everyday life scene of a doctor tending to a wounded boy. In 1885 he won a medal of honor for his painting “Horses at the Watering Trough”. Beginning in the 1880s, Dagnan-Bouveret maintained a studio with Gustave Courtois in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris considered the most affluent and prestigious of the residential areas. 

Adolphe Dagnan-Bouveret was considered by the 1880s as a leading modern artist known for both his peasant scenes and mystical-religious compositions. Like many of his contemporaries, he was fascinated by the religious customs of Brittany in northern France. Throughout the 1880s, Dagnan-Bouveret painted a series of portraits and scenes depicting the women of Brittany wearing their traditional regional dress and white head coverings. He was one of the first artists to use the new medium of photography to bring a greater realism to his work.

After his initial visit to Brittany in 1885, Dagnan-Bouveret turned his attention to that most westerly part of France, a complete change from his earlier works from the Franche-Comté region in the far east of the country. He painted a series of modern interpretations of religious work. One of these is the 1888 “Madonna of the Trellis” which depicts the Virgin Mary embracing the infant Christ under the dense foliage of a trellis. The Madonna is not dressed in the traditional blue but rather in white and has a contemporary appearance. 

Adolphe Dagnan-Bouveret painted some modern history works, the most notable being his 1889 “Conscripts” which depicts young men, just conscripted into the army, marching behind a drummer and a boy carrying the national flag. Dagnan-Bouveret did not exhibit it for two years. He entered it in 1891 at the re-organized Salon run by the Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where the painting’s successful reception made it the focus of French nationalism. In 1891, Dagnan-Bouveret was made an Officer of the Legion of Honor, one of the highest French decorations,

After 1893, Dagnan-Bouveret abandoned naturalism and devoted his efforts to religious works. He exhibited his painting “The Last Supper” at the Salon de Champ-de-Mars in 1896. Probably Dagnan-Bouveret’s most spectacular religious painting, it followed the artistic tradition but contained more contemporary styled figures lit from a  source of golden  light not indicated in the painting. 

Adolphe Dagnan-Bouveret became a member in 1900 of the Institut de France, a learned society encompassing the five academies of arts and science. He died at the age of seventy-seven on the third of July in 1929. 

Dagnan-Bouveret’s work is housed in a number of private collections, including that of art collector George McCulloch, and in several public collections including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute in Chicago, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and the Musée d’Orsay. 

Top Insert Image: Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, “Woman from Brittany”, 1886, Oil on Canvas, 36.2 x 27.9 cm, Art Institute of Chicago

Bottom Insert Image: Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret “Breton Women at a Pardon”, 1887, Oil on Canvas, 125.1 x 141.1 cm, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Spain

Calendar: November 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of November

He Says “Woof”

November 2, 1947 marks the first and only flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules, known as the Spruce Goose.

In 1942, the U.S. War Department needed to transport war material and personnel to Britain. A requirement was issued for an aircraft that could cross the Atlantic with a large payload; however, because of wartime priorities, the aircraft could not be made from strategic materials such as aluminum. Henry J. Kaiser, a leading ship builder, teamed with aircraft designer Howard Hughes to create the largest aircraft ever built at that time.

The aircraft was designed to carry 150,000 pounds, 750 fully equipped troops, or two 30-ton M4 Sherman tanks. The final design was to be built mostly of wood to conserve metal, with its elevators and rudder covered with fabric. The construction of the first prototype, the HK-1, took sixteen months. Henry Kaiser, frustrated by the long delays and the restrictions on materials, decided to withdraw from the project.

Howard Hughes continued the program on his own, under a new contract limiting the production to one plane, now the H-4 Hercules. Work proceeded slowly and the H-4 was not completed until the war was over. The plane was built by the Hughes Aircraft Company using composite technology for the laminated wood construction. The finished plane was moved in three sections to Pier E in Long Beach, California, where a hanger was erected around it with a ramp to launch the H-4 into the harbor. In all, development cost for the plane was twenty-three million dollars, or more than ten times that in today dollars.

On November 2, 1947, with Howard Hughes at the controls, and a crew of seven, and fourteen invited guests, the Hercules picked up speed and lifted off. The Hercules remained airborne for 26 seconds at a height of seventy feet above the water and a speed of 135 miles per hour. At this altitude the aircraft still experienced ground effect. This brief flight proved that the now uneeded aircraft was flight worthy. The Hercules H-4 never flew again; its lifting capacity and ceiling height were never tested.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has the Hughes H-1 Racer and a section of theH-4’s wing. The Aero Club of Southern California acquired the Hercules H-4 aircraft in 1980, displaying it in a very large geodesic dome in Long Beach, California. The club later arranged for the aircraft to be given to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon where it is currently on display. The 315,000 square foot aircraft hanger where the Hercules H-4 was built, located in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles,  is on the National Register of Historical Buildings.

Nahum B Zenil

Nahum B. Zenil, “Angel-Demonio”, 1991, Oil and Ink on Heavy Paper, 72 x 52 cm.

Nahum B. Zenil is a Mexican artist who often uses his own self-portrait as the principal model for a cultural critical interpretation of Mexico, especially concerning homosexuality and mestization. His art is often compared to that of Frida Kahlo, in which the self becomes the principal object of their paintings letting the viewer discover the artists as individualsas well as the broader social and cutural aspects of their work.

Born in the state of Veracruz, Zenil enrolled in 1959 at the Escuela nacional de Maestros in Mexico City from which he graduated in 1964. He later entered the Escula Nacional de Pinture y Escultura in 1966. Zenil is one of the founding members of the Serman Cultural Gay Festival which occurs yearly at the Museum of the University of Chopo.

Calendar: November 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of November

The Revelation From On High

November 1st was the opening day of two of William Shakespeare’s plays.

On November 1, 1604, William Shakespeare’s tragedy play “Othello”, believed to have been written in 1603, had its first presentation in the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The story revolves around Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army, and his jealous and traitorous ensign, Iago. It is believed to  be based on the story “A Moorish Captain” by Giovanni Battista Giraldi, the Italian novelist and poet. However, the story also resembles an incident in the tale “The Three Apples” from the “Arabian Nights” collection.

Shakespeare, while following the story of Giraldi, departed from it in some details, such as adding minor characters. The major departure is the death of the heroine Desdemona. In his presentation, Shakespeare has Othello kill Desdemona by suffocation, toning down the violence. In Giraldi’s story, the “Moor” bludgeons his wife to death with a sand-filled stocking, described in gruesome detail. In Shakespeare’s play, Othello, commits suicide; and in Giraldi’s tale Othello is exiled and then pursued by Desdemona’s relatives who kill him.

Later performances of “Othello” occurred in April of 1610 at the Globe Theater and at Oxford in September of 1610. It also was performed at the Blackfriars Theater in London by the King’s Men, an acting company to which Shakespeare belonged for most of his career. “Othello” was one of twenty plays performed by the King’s Men during the winter of 1612, in celebration of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, the Electorate of the Palatinate region of the Holy Roman Empire.

On November 1, 1611, Hallowmas night, Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “Tempest”, believed to have been written 1610-1611, was first presented by the King’s Men before King James I and the English royal court at Whitehall Palace. This play was also one of the twenty plays performed to celebrate Princess Elizabeth’s marriage. The next recorded performance was at the Blackfriars Theater in 1669; this is supported by the stage directions written within the play script.

The “Tempest” differs from Shakespeare’s other plays, being organized in a stricter Neo-classical style. Shakespeare in the “Tempest” observed the three rules of drama: the play’s plot  should have one action that it follows, with minimal subplots; the action in the play’s plot  should occur no longer than a day’s span; a play’s plot should exist in a single physical space with the stage representing that place. Shakespeare’s other plays’s plots took place in multiple separate locations and over the course of several days or years.